Easy, really. Just rent a house that the owner plans on selling, take the year to make sure you like it, then do all the irritating paperwork and get the transaction done. (I’m really bad at the paperwork part – it might as well be in Mongolian as far as I’m concerned.)

We are in the middle of this process, and will close on May 31. The entire thing has almost been charmed from day one: we found the house via Craigslist, and since we were in Indianapolis at the time, the only way we could get a feel for the place was to ask our friend Christine to take a look at it. When she showed up to meet the landlord, they both realized that their daughters went to preschool together. Those kinds of connections always make things more reassuring; plus, that sort of serendipity has repeated itself several times since we’ve come to Denver, leading to renewed and rediscovered friendships, jobs, and an overall sense of purpose about things that often seem pretty random. (That’s a very wordy way of saying that we’ve run into various long-lost acquaintances – college and grad school friends and colleagues, Peace Corps folks – in tiny neighborhood churches and in elevators in downtown office buildings. In most cases, these are people that belong in other times and places and *not* in Denver, Colorado.)

On to the house and neighborhood. Here are some outside pictures of the house. First the front:

Now the back (imagine more roses in bloom and a cat or two lounging somewhere):

And finally, the patio (imagine pots of flowers and another layer of peace flags):

The house is small, and we’re looking forward to using space in a more strategic and intentional way. Maybe a dining room table that doubles as a sofabed? A piano that also washes dishes?

We live in the Baker Historic Neighborhood, where some of our favorite haunts are within a few blocks. Here are some of the places we go:

The current banner is brought to you by the 1940 film The Shop Around the Cornerdirected by Ernst Lubitsch. I notice that the film also appears in the “Classics Seen with the Kids” sidebar on my sister’s blog. Anyway, for the uninitiated, Lubitsch’s films – without exception in my experience – are charming, clever, sexy, hilarious, and touching. The banner shows Margaret Sullavan looking for mail from the pen pal she has fallen in love with, who also happens to be the coworker (Jimmy Stewart) that she can’t stand. Of course, she doesn’t know that the two men are the same person, and if this is all sounding familiar it’s because You’ve Got Mail, starring the 90’s version of Jimmy Stewart (Tom Hanks) is a remake. (The film was also remade as a musical, In the Good Old Summertime.) Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to check out one of the other Lubitsch films. My favorites are To Be or Not to Be and Heaven Can Wait. I’m including a shot of Hell from the latter film.